Craftsmen Figures

In ancient Greece the artisan class was not considered an
autonomous category. There was no term exactly corresponding to
what we understand by "artisan." The term
demiourgos offers to broad a range and covers very diverse
functions. In the Odyssey, for example, Eumaueus asks,
"What guests are sent to fetch the stranger? Those who can
serve as craftsmen, diviners and doctors and carpenters, or bard,
who are beloved by heaven . . .! It is those who are sought from
the ends of the earth!" (Od 17.382ff.). Later
(Od 19.135), Homer includes in this group the heralds,
whose functions are also very diverse; used as ambassadors, heralds
direct assembles, fill the office of assistant during sacrifices
and even serve at table during meals. The artisan is therefore only
a particular aspect of the demiourgos. As elsewhere, the
term techne covers the categories of art and
craftsmanship, which are distinct in our eyes.

Hephaestus

In Greek mythology, a certain number of gods and men can be
considered artisans. Among the gods, the figure who primarily takes
this role is, incontestably, Hephaestus. In the Iliad,
Hephaestus first appears as a cupbearer for the gods (Il
1.596ff.); then as a master of metals and talismans (Il
2.101; 18.369ff., 410ff.); and finally as a master of fire, an
element with which he is almost identified (Il
21.330ff.).

Certainly, Hephaestus is master of fire, but not just any fire.
He is essentially the technical fire, the fire that is used to
accomplish the tasks of artisans, not the heart fire, which is the
domain of Hestia, nor the celestial fire, the lightning of Zeus.
What is more, Hephaestus is not the master of just any technical
fire, but essentially of the fire that is sued in metalwork. The
fire that burns the earth is reserved mainly for Prometheus,
probably because he is a Titan, a name deriving from the term
titanos, the quicklime formed from an earthy element and
from fire (Aristotle, Meteorologica 4.11.389a28).

Moreover, Hephaestus works only noble metals: gold, silver,
bronze, brass, etc. The working of iron, which is used to fabricate
the tools of daily life, belongs to the Dactyls (the fingers) who
also have proper names: Acmon (Anvil), Damnameneus (the Subjugator,
that is, the Hammer), and Celmis (perhaps the Casting). The
Invention of the metallurgy of iron, too, is attributed to the
Dactyls of Ida in Phrygia, where ironwork goes back to ancient
times (Phoronis, frag. 2). And for the Dactyls (Schol. Apollonios,
Argonautica 1.1129), as for Hephaestus, metallurgy proves
to be inseparable from magic.

Hephaestus, in fact, appears as the preeminent binding god.
Certainly, as metallurgist he can fashion and unfashion material
bonds. But his action is especially magical, and it is with
immaterial bonds that he usually binds his victims; notably Hera,
whom he immobilizes on a throne (Plato, Republic, 2.378d:
cf. Libanius, Narrationes 7); and especially Ares and
Aphrodite: having caught these adulterers in flagrante delicto, he
snares them in an invisible net (Od 8.266-366).

If he has the power of binding, Hephaestus also has the power of
binding. It is Hephaestus himself who releases his mother, an act
which permits her to return to Olympus. But Hephaestus is
especially famous for mobilizing and therefore, in a sense,
unchaining beings who are by nature immobile. Hephaestus has at his
disposal two servants made of gold, who work in his workshops like
living being; the bellows in his forge move without his having to
work them, and he fashions automatic tripods (Il
18.369ff).

The science of metallurgy and magic appears inseparable, in the
case of Hephaestus, from the crippling of his lower limbs, which
have been represented in several ways. This infirmity, which was no
longer represented in classical art, appears sometimes as a
debility of his legs, sometimes as a deformity of his feet, so that
they turn backwards. In the latter case, the god could move about
not only forwards but also backwards. This lameness is explained in
various ways. It can be seen as the price of his extraordinary
knowledge. This crippling of the only god who devotes himself to
technical craftsmanship can also be recognized as a sign of the
public contempt with which work was regarded in ancient Greece.
Plutarch essentially affirms this: "There is no young man of
good birth who, having seen the Zeus of Pisa or the Hera of Argos,
would wish, for all that, to become a Phidias or a Polycletus, or
to become an Anacreon, a Philemon or an Archilochus when he has
been pleased by their poems. For a work can seduce us with is charm
without constraining us to take its worker as a model"
(Pericles 2.1). In this double gait we can distinguish the
ambiguity that characterizes Hephaestus and manifests itself not
only in his actions but also in his adventures.

There are several versions of the birth and infancy of
Hephaestus. We will mention only those reported by Homer and
Hesiod. According to Hesiod, Hera gave birth to Hephaestus
"without union of love, through anger at her husband"
(Theogony 928). According to Homer, at the moment of
Hephaestus's birth, Hera threw him from the sky into the sea,
because he was crippled and she was ashamed of him; but Hephaestus
was taken in by Eurynome and Thetis, who raised him in an
underwater grotto, where he learned the art of metallurgy
(Il 18.394ff.). However, still according to Homer's
Iliad, it was Zeus who threw Hephaestus from the sky into
the sea one day when Hephaestus took his mother's side. Then
Hephaestus fell onto the island of Lemnos, where the Sintians took
him in (Il 1.586ff.).

The main interest of all these versions rests in the fact that
they allow us to establish relations between Hephaestus, on the one
hand, and Ouranos and various marine powers on the other.

Like Ouranos (Hesiod Theogony 123-32), Hephaestus
(Th 928) is conceived without the intervention of love.
Moreover, Hephaestus is the only god other than Ouranos who is not
endowed with physical perfection. As an effect of the mutilation
inflicted upon him by Kronos, Ouranos is castrated, while
Hephaestus suffers a deformity of his lower limbs. In order to
pursue this comparison, it is relevant to note that Hephaestus is
thrown from the sky into the sea like the testicles of Ouranos,
whose sperm makes possible to birth of Aphrodite -- often
considered the wife of Hephaestus. In the Iliad, Homer
describes the workshop of Hephaestus thus: "Silver-footed
Thetis arrived in the dwelling of Hephaestus, the imperishable and
starry dwelling, radiant among all in the eyes of the immortals,
all in bronze and constructed by the bandy-legged one himself"
(Il 18.369-71). Now, this description inevitably makes one
think of the starry vault of the sky, which the early Greeks
considered to be made of metal: the poets say that the sky is made
of bronze (chalkeos or poluchalkeos) or of iron
(sidereos). That is why, in an Orphic context, Proclus can
write: "Let us add to our traditions the convictions that we
have received from the very first from the (Orphic) theologians
concerning Hephaestus. . . . They say that he is a smith, because
he is a worker and also because, since the sky is made of bronze in
its function as a symbol of the intelligible, he who made the sky
is a smith" (Proclus, In Platonis Timaeum [23d-e],
1.142.18ff. Diehl). The comparison is reinforced by that fact that
on certain illustrated documents Hephaestus's hair is arranged
in a pilos, an egg-shaped cap, of dark blue, which
Eusebius of Caesarea compares to the celestial vault
(Praeparatio Evangelica 3.2.23).

Hephaestos also had clear connections with numerous marine
powers. It was into the sea that Hephaestus fell when he was thrown
from the celestial heights. According to Homer, he was taken in and
raised by Eurynome, one of the daughters of Okeanos and Tethys, and
by Thetis, one of the daughters of Nereus, the old man of the sea,
and Doris. According to another version, also found in Homer, the
Sintians took him in at Lemnos, According to a third version, Hera,
having conceived Hephaestus as a result of premartial sexual
relations with Zeus, delivered Hephaestus to the Naxian Cedalion,
who taught the young man to work metal.

Whatever the case, Hephaestus spends a part of his life either
in the sea or on an island in the middle of the sea. During this
time he is initiated into the arts that he practices, metallurgy
and magic. This is significant, as demonstrated by two types of
mythical characters.

Of one type are the Telchines, daemons of Rhodes, associated
with seals (Suetonius, On Terms of Abuse in Greek). Like
seals, the Telchines are ambiguous characters, halfway between fish
and men, towards whom they have mixed sentiments of neighborliness
and hostility, and between the sea and the earth, that is, between
wet and dry. The Telchines are both magicians an metallurgists. As
magicians, they have the evil eye: their glance alters things. As
metallurgists, they are credited with a number of works of art,
notably the sickle of Kronos (Strabo 14.2.7) and the trident of
Poeseidon (Callimachus, Hymn to Delos 31).

The Cabiri, whose native land was Lemnos and whose principal
sanctuary was in Samothrace are said to have had Hephaestus for a
father, or at least for a divine ancestor (Strabo, Geo
10.3.21; Stephanus of Byzantium, s.v. Kabeiria). Marine
powers, they are explicitly identified as crabs by Hesychius:
"The Cabiri are crabs (karkinoi), animals particularly honored
in Lemnos, where they are held to be gods. It is also said that
they are the sons of Hephaestus" (Hesychius, s.v.
Kabeiroi). This crustacean has several points in common
with Hephaestus. The crab is an amphibious animal that lives in the
sea and on the earth. But its extremities are what makes it
particularly interesting. The crab's way of walking inevitably
reminds us of the double gait of Hephaestus, and its two claws
remind us of the pincers of the metallurgist (in ancient Greek,
karkinoi). Like Hephaestus, whose descendants they are,
the Cabiri are metallurgists.

As a metallurgist and smith, Hephaestus participates above all
in that metis with which Athena is endowed. Hephaestus is
said to be Klutometis (Homeric Hymn to Hephaestus 1) and
polumetis (Il 21.355). We can thus understand why it was
he who, with a one-two punch, delivered Athena when she was trapped
in the head of Zeus. Zeus had swallowed Metis upon the advice of
Ouranos and Gaea, who had revealed that, if Metis had a daughter by
him, she would then give him a son who would dethrone him, as Zeus
himself had dethroned Kronos.

These close mythical relations uniting Hephaestus to Athena find
their material manifestations at Athens in their common temples and
cults. Thus, the small cult of Erectheum could be the oldest
Athenian cult of Hephaestus, guest of Athena of the Polis. This
sanctuary sheltered Erichthonius, the Phidian hero, who was thought
to be their child. It is related that Hephaestus received Athena in
his workshop when she came to ask him for weapons. He was
overwhelmed by a strong desire for the goddess; she fled, but
Hephaestus caught her. Athena defended herself, and in the fray the
god's sperm spilled on her leg. The goddess dried herself with
some wool and threw the sperm onto the earth. Thus impregnated,
Gaea produced a child, Erichthonius, who was one of the first kings
of Athens (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.14.6ff.) -- a type
of conception comparable to that which follows the castration of
Ouranos by Kronos (Th 178-206).

The personal temple of Hephaestus, the Hephaesteum, which he
shared with Athena, is located beyond the Ceramicus, the
potters' area, near the temple of Aphrodite. During the peace
of Nicias (421 B.C.), an artist was commissioned to erect bronze
statues of Athena and Hephaestus on the same pedestal. Nearby, at
Colonus of the Agora, Hephaestus is found in proximity of
Prometheus and Athena.

Two festivals on unequal importance were celebrated in honor of
Hephaestus. The Chalcheia, which took place in the beginning of
November, became a festival of artisans who worked with metal; this
festival was also called the Athenaea, indicating that the goddess
also played a role in it (Sophocles, frag 844). On the other hand,
the Hephaesteia, from which Athena was absent, was a more important
event than the Chalcheia, though less well known.

Be that as it may, it is Plato, notably in the Critias,
who relates the myth of Atlantis, where Athena and Hephaestus are
found most closely united: "Hephaestus and Athena have the
same nature, first, because, as brother and sister, they have the
same father, and second, because their double love for knowledge
and art leads them to the same end. The two of them received this
region (Athens) in a common and unique lot. It should properly
belong to them, being naturally suited for virtue and thought.
Having placed respectable people there as autochthons, they
organized the city according to their taste" (Plato,
Critias 109c-d). In this same dialogue, Plato situates the
common temple of Athena and Hephaestus at the top of the Acropolis,
near the dwellings of the kings. On the slopes, warriors live,
charged with protecting the kings. Finally, on the plain that
extends from the foot of the Acropolis the craftsmen and farmers
are settled. In this perspective, the temple of Athena and
Hephaestus on the Acropolis is reminiscent primarily of the linked
presence of Athena of the Polis and Hephaestus in the Erechtheum;
secondly, of Athena Parthenos, the warrior; and thirdly, of Athena
Ergana (the Worker) of the plain, who shared a temple with
Hephaestus at Colonus, an outlying part of Athens inhabited by
artisans and shopkeepers.

Hephaestus performs two of the most important functions of a
magician: he binds his enemies with unbreakable and often invisible
bonds, and he protects his friends with a wide variety of
prophylactic devices, such as the dogs of Alcinous mentioned in the
Odyssey 7.91-94.

A gloss on the name of Pandareus gives the story of a golden dog
built by Hephaestus: "He [Pandareus] stole from Zeus's
temple on Crete the animated [empsychon] dog of gold,
which Hephaestus had made and he gave it to Tantalus." A
scholiast to Pindar notes that this dog served as a guardian
(phyla) of Zeus' temple on Crete. The Hellenistic poet Nicander
of Colophon refers to yet another manufactured dog when he explains
the excellence of Chaonian and Molossian dogs: "They say that
these dogs are descendants of a dog, which Hephaestus, after
casting it from Demonesian bronze and setting a soul
[psyche] in it, gave as a gift to Zeus and he have it as a
gift to Europa." Nicander then describes how the dog passed as
a gift from Europa to Minos to Procris to Cephalus until Zeus
finally turned it into stone as it pursued the Teumasian fox.

Minos and the island of Crete were the recipients of still
another of Hephaestus' animated statues: Talos, the bronze man.
It was the statue's custom to walk along the periphery of the
island thrice daily and pelt with rocks anyone who approached the
island. He is supposed to have died as a result of Medea's
magic spells when he attempted to stop the Argonauts from landing
on the shore of Crete.

According to Alcaeus, Hephaestus made a bronze lion and into
this put pharmaka [powerful or magical herbs] beneficial
to mankind. This was later hidden on Lesbos to hide the island.

There are four steps to Hephaestus' creation: (1) Hephaestus
forges a metal statue, usually of an animal; (2) the statue is
animated; (3) he gives the statue as a gift to a god or mortal
kind; and, (4) the statue is used as a phylactery for a building or
kingdom.

These statues are animated as a result of specific techniques
and they are used to guard limited geographical areas. All the
statues are said to be alive: both Talos and the golden dog are
described as "animated" [empsychos]; Hephaestus
gives a soul (psychen entitheriai) to the bronze dog. All
of the statues are explicitly said to be phylacteries, and wherever
the location of the prophylactic statue is specified, it seems to
be along the perimeter of the place to be protected: the erection
of the hold and silver dogs at the threshold of Alcinous'
palace; Talos' thrice daily circuambulation of the island of
Crete; and the burial of the Lesbian Lions "hard by the border
of the Methymians."

The practice of putting pharmaka into hollow statues in
order to animate them is attested among the theurgists and
magicians of the Roman period, where it was often traditionally
linked with "Chaldaean" lore. Medea practiced this when
she built a hollow image of Artemis.

Athena

Whether alone or associated with Hephaestus, Athena occupies,
like him, a fundamental place among divinities of the crafts.
Throughout the multiplicity of her aspects -- warrior goddess armed
with the lance and the aegis, protectress of carpenters, mistress
of harnesses and pilot of ships, patroness of weavers and potters,
inventor of the swing plow -- whatever the domain into which she
enters, Athena sets in motion the same qualities of manual skill
and practical intelligence. The intelligence she gets directly from
her mother Metis, the wife swallowed by Zeus when he wanted to
incorporate her substance into himself.

The warrior Athena, who sprang from the head of her father, has
remained a virgin; by renouncing femininity and its fulfillment
within marriage, the virgin rejoins the male camp and by this
inversion incarnates the warrior values with their maximum
intensity. She bears Metis's nickname, the Spartan name of
Chalkioikos, "she of the bronze dwelling," the
goddess as dazzling as the armor with which she is girded. In the
battle against the giants as in the battles of the Iliad, she
carries out or inspires the ruses of war, surprise attacks,
ambushes, and other tactical maneuvers which constitute the
technique of war. But her action calls on more mysterious means.
Like the art of Hephaestus, the warrior techne of the
bronze Athena is greatly influenced by magic. Concealed by the
aegis -- a large shawl of finely woven metal, with long fringes,
decorated with the masks of Confusion, Quarrel, and the terrifying
head of the Gorgon -- she paralyzes her adversaries or renders
invincible the heroes she protects. In the fray, she raises her
voice, as piercing as a trumpet, and her flashing eyes make even
the most courageous lose their heads. Conceived by her mother,
Metis, at the same time as her armor, like a metallurgical product,
she came into the world uttering a war cry. Athena possesses and
deploys in battle the magical courage that looks and sounds like
bronze, the warrior metal that is worked and animated by the
craftsman's fire.

The Athena who protects and instructs artisans appears in
general with the characteristics of a more serene and familiar
divinity. Her modes of action seem more accessible, except when
they involve a technique that uses fire. This applies to little but
pottery, since the domain of metallurgy belongs entirely to
Hephaestus. During the firing, the potter addresses his prayers to
Athena, asking her to "spread her hand over the kiln."
The goddess will indicate to him the right moment when the vessels
are properly baked, when the varnish will be shiny enough. She also
intervenes by ridding the kiln of a troop of demons with evocative
names: the Breaker, the Cracker, the Inextinguishable, the Burster.
A Corinthian tablet represents her in the form of a large owl
perched on top of a potter's kiln, facing a phallic dwarf, the
bearer of the evil eye. The protectress of potters is a divinity
who is the mistress of fire, of its alarming powers, its benefits,
and its evil spells.

Athena presides especially over woodworking. Woodcutters,
carpenters, chariot builders and shipbuilders benefit from her
attentive protection. She cherishes in particular the carpenter
Tekton, son of Harmon, the Adjuster, who knew how to make
masterpieces of all sorts and constructed for Paris the ship which
brought Helen to Troy (Il 5.59-60). She assists Danaus,
the inventor of the first shop with her advice and her aid
(Apollodorus, Mythographus 2.1.4; Hyginus,
Fabulae 272). According to one tradition, it was she and
not Demeter who invented the swing plow. The Works and
Days of Hesiod attributes to the "servant of Athena"
alone the capacity of attaching a piece of curved wood to the stock
and fitting it to the shaft of the plow to make the plowman's
tool. In the construction of these various works, Athena intervenes
at all stages of woodworking, beginning with the felling, because
"it is metis and not force that makes a good
woodcutter" (Il 15.412). When Athena directs the
construction of the ship of the Argonauts, she herself goes to
Mount Pelion to select the trees, which she fells with a hatchet
(Ap. Rhod., Argon. 2.1187-89). She teaches the carpenter,
Argos, the art of measuring lengths of wood with a ruler
(ibid. 1.724). She watches over the assembling and
adjusting of different pieces with the help of dowels. She is seen
planing and polishing the wood of Pelias's lance herself
(Cypria frag. 3), and her protege Odysseus, the
polumetis, is an expert in all these operations when he
has to build a ship to leave Calypso's island (Od
5.234-257).

In the domain of chariots and ships, Athena's competence
does not stop at building. The art of driving chariots and piloting
ships also belongs to her. In both cases, her functions are clearly
distinct from those of Poseidon, master of the horse and of the
sea.

A Corinithian tradition attributes to Athena Chalinitis the
invention of the bridle. According to Pausanias and Pindar, it is
she who procures for Bellerophon the instrument necessary to tame
Pegasus. But the episode occurs in a different context. It implies
that technical intelligence doubled by magic that we have seen at
work on the battlefield and at the potter's kiln. On the one
hand, the bit is a metallic object, produced by the metis
of the blacksmith and endowed with the mysterious values of the
metal that comes out of the fire. On the other hand, it has an
effect like a magic hold on the wild horse, a restless animal
driven by a demonic and savage force, which is subdued for the uses
of war.

Concerning mastery of the chariot, the qualities and expertise
that the charioteer demonstrates when inspired by Athena Hippia
come from a more humane techne, from a metis
quite close to that of the carpenter. The goddess teaches the
charioteer to plot his course, to exploit the weakness of his
adversary by a questionable maneuver, in short, to make a slower
and less vigorous team win by means of trickery (Nonnus,
Dionysiaca 37).

Another group of artisans who depend upon the patronage of
Athena are those who work in wool and fabrics. The goddess presides
over and excels in spinning, in weaving, in making sumptuously
decorated cloths by the methods of tapestry (embroidery is unknown
in the Homeric world). Athena makes her own beautiful cloak and
that of Hera. Although she teaches her art to Pandora, and bestows
upon the women of Phaeacia the skills to become the finest of all
weavers (Od 7.110), Athena does not tolerate being
surpassed by a rival. The imprudent Arachne sees her all too
perfect work torn apart by the goddess, and she herself is
transformed into a spider (Ovid, Met 6).

There is no hiatus in Greek thought between this branch of
Athena's craftsmanlike activities and the preceding branch.
Between the two domains there are numerous analogies in vocabulary.
The work of the weaver seems to be apprehended according to the
same mental scheme as that of the carpenter. Both artisans in wood
and workers in textiles proceed in two successive operations:
cutting and assembling. The spinner who fashions into a thread the
lock of wool she has isolated from the mass of shearings works in
the same way as the carpenter who shapes and planes the boards and
the beams cut by the woodcutter from the tree trunk. The carpenter
and the weaver then construct a new whole by associating separate
elements, by the juxtaposition of beams or the interlacing of
threads. The protection the goddess gives Penelope is exactly
symmetrical to the concern she has for Odysseus.

The same technical intelligence is expressed, therefore, in
different categories of artisans. The technique is of the same
substance as Athena's intelligence, such that the vocabulary of
techne furnishes images to express that technique even
when it is concerned only with mental operations. The verbs
"to spin" and "to construct" often accompany
the noun metis: thus Athena and her proteges sometimes
spin their tricks and weave their plans,
sometimes arrange their projects and construct their
subtle traps.

Daedalus

Besides the two great technical divinities of its pantheon,
Greek mythology knew a series of heroes remarkable for their
dexterity, like Odysseus, and sometimes endowed with the title of
"first inventor," such as Epeus, Palamedes, Daedalus,
etc. All of these mortals are celebrated at least as much for their
intellectual qualities as for their practical skill. This is
certainly true of Daedalus, the prototype of the artist and of the
artisan; his genealogy illuminates both sides of the paradigmatic
personality of the artisan.

Among his direct ancestors are Eupalamus, "skillful
hand," and Palamaon, "manual," two names which
denote the dexterity and creative skill of the hand. But
Daedalus's father is most often said to be Metion, "the
man of metis," and his mother is sometimes
Metiadousa, "she who delights in metis,"
sometimes Iphinoe, "she of the vigorous spirit," and even
Phrasimede, "she who conceives of a plan."

The series of fabulous adventures which are spun into the thread
of his legend give his character a marvelous dimension. Daedalus
was famous throughout the whole world for his talent, but also for
his wanderings and his misfortunes," Pausanias reports
(7.4.5). This hero is an Athenian. He belongs to the line of
Metionidae, the younger branch of the royal family of Athens, and
is descended, through Erichthonius, from Hephaestus and -- almost
-- from Athena. He begins by creating statuary or, according to
another tradition, inspires great progress in this art. The statues
which come from his hands are almost alive. He also invents several
implements indispensable for the work of the carpenter and the
architect: the hatchet, the plumb line, the gimlet, and glue. But
he has a nephew, his sister's son, who, while still a young
apprentice, threatens to surpass his uncle's genius: the lad
devises the lathe, the carpenter's compass, and by imitating
the snake's jaw, the first saw made of metal. Such ingenuity
provokes Daedalus's jealousy, and he throws the child down from
the top of the Acropolis. Pursued, or condemned to exile, the
artisan seeks refuge in Crete, at the court of King Minos. There he
fashions statues, a place for Ariadne to dance, and an ingenious
machine for Pasiphae: a cow of leather-covered wood which permits
the queen, hidden inside, to unite with a bull. She gives birth to
the Minotaur. At the request of Minos, Daedalus constructs the
labyrinth in which the monster is imprisoned. Young Athenians are
regularly handed over to him as fodder. Theseus -- a cousin of
Daedalus -- arrives, and to please Ariadne, who is in love with the
hero, the artisan gives her the ball of string which will help
Theseus to emerge victoriously from the trial. But Minos finds out,
and, as a punishment, shuts Daedalus and his son Icarus in the
labyrinth. The artisan then fashions wings and the two fly away.
Icarus imprudently climbs too high in the sky, the heat of the sun
melts the wax which holds the feathers together, and the young man
plunges to his death before his father's eyes. Daedalus reaches
Sicily and places himself at the service of King Cocalus. He builds
a dam, fortifies a citadel to shelter the king's treasure, lays
the foundation of a temple to Aphrodite on the peak of a crag,
installs a heating system. Minos pursues him in hatred, seeking him
with tenacity and cunning: he offers a reward to anyone who knows
how to thread a snail's shell. King Cocalus assigns the task to
Daedalus, who has taken refuge with him. Daedalus attaches the
thread to an ant's body and puts it into the shell through a
hole pierced in the top. When the ant comes out again, the problem
is solved. Minos thus detects Daedalus's presence and demands
to have him back. But in order to keep Daedalus, the king of
Sicily's daughters help him to scald Minos in his bath. In this
way the artisan triumphs over the sovereign.

This romantic story displays a certain number of themes -- or
mythemes -- which are also found in mythologies of the
artisan in other cultures: living statues, headlong flights, flying
men, labyrinths, murders, etc. But their organization in the Greek
context takes on specific qualities and depends on a coherent group
of representations and a system of special values -- values that
structure the characters of the technician divinities, Hephaestus
and Athena.

This legendary narrative is packed with traditions about a
series of precious objects produced by a group of artisans of
luxury, objects called daidala (Daedalian). Analysis of
this narrative allows us to distinguish the framework of thought
that governed the way the Greeks perceived art and technique.

The artisan-artist is defined as an ambiguous and disconcerting
person. The ambivalence of techne is expressed in a series
of oppositions, also characteristic of mythical logic.

There is an opposition between the notions of "to
show" and "to hide." The inventor of the statue is a
creator of a spectacle, of an object meant to be seen. Daedalus was
the first to "reveal the appearance of the gods." In
showing the divinity, the sculptor renders the invisible visible.
When tradition makes Daedalus the author of decisive progress in
Greek plastic arts, and not their inventor, he is given credit for
"having opened the eyes of statues." In the one case he
creates an image to be seen; in the other, he gives this image
sight. The two traditions are complementary. Their duality
expresses the reversibility of the Greek conception of vision:
"to see" and "to be seen" are equivalent. Sight
is both the organ and the faculty of vision and its object. When
applied to the divine image, this principle of reciprocity is
applied to a background of religious representations: it is just as
dangerous to see the face of the god as it is to fall under his
gaze. Blindness and madness are the punishments inflicted on rash
humans. The inventor of art seems to make a game of this
danger.

But Daedalus is also the one who hides, who renders the visible
invisible -- hiding Pasiphae in the wooden cow, shutting up the
Minotaur in the meanderings of the labyrinth (only to reveal him to
Theseus later), fortifying the hiding place of the royal treasure
of Cocalus -- and Daedalus himself hides to escape the vengeance of
Minos.

The giver of sight is also the creator of life. Certainly art
imitates life; and the works of Daedalus have a striking realism:
"they seem to look and walk" because "he unglued the
arms from the bodies of statues" and "separated their
legs." But the life of Daedalus's statues is not simply a
metaphor. He breathes real life into them. Their mobility is so
great that they have to be tied up to prevent them from running
away (Plato, Meno 97d). They escape, and are endowed with
sight and even with speech. This mysterious life is of the same
order as that of the magical works the secret of which Athena
taught the inhabitants of Rhodes, whose "streets bear figures
that resemble walking, living beings" (Pindar, Ol 7.52); to
this same order belongs Hephaestus's automatons, self-moving
tripods, and golden servants, and the gold and silver guard dogs
from the palace of Alcinous. By creating objects that mirror life,
the ingenuity of the artisan can also produce a monster against
nature: by permitting an impossible union, Pasiphae's machine
caused the birth of the Minotaur.

Though he us the master of animation and of life, the craftsman
is also the one who kills, helps kill, or makes others kill: he is
the passionate killer of his pupil and disciple; the murderer
(through his imprudence) of his son Icarus; the accomplice un
Theseus's killing of the Minotaur, his creature"; and the
instigator, finally, of the assassination of Minos, his
sovereign.

This second opposition, "to create" versus "to
kill," is closely linked to the first, for to produce is to
bring to light, and to kill is to make disappear, to send to Hades
(a-vides, the Invisible).

The ambiguity of art also appears in the series of antitheses
which oppose form to illusion, beauty to evil, truth to falsehood.
The creator of form is the maker of illusion. There is a story that
Heracles, finding himself face to face with a statue of himself
made by Daedalus, believed he was facing an adversary and struck
him. Beauty that fascinates can hide the worst of evils, like
Pandora -- the creation of Hephaestus and Athena -- who was sent to
earth, adorned with jewels made by Daedalus, to sow misfortune
among men; like the Trojan Horse, which amazed the Trojans and
brought them disaster. The techne that imitates the true
is nothing but a lying artifice. The cow of wood and leather is
unnatural and holds a real woman. It acts as a lure for the bull,
which gets caught in the trap. It is a trap just like the
labyrinth, from which one cannot extricate oneself. In one
anecdote, Daedalus spreads nets to capture thieves who have stolen
a treasure. The entire legend puts art and ruse in constant
correlation. Techne both embellishes and falsifies. The
artisan is the mastery of forgery and subterfuge.

In the specific domain of technique and invention, the
dominating opposition is between the notions of straightness and
circularity or sinuosity. Like every good carpenter, Daedalus
guides his plane straight. When he begins the first flight, he
adheres strictly to the rules of navigation: he flies with his eyes
fixed on the constellations -- Bootes, Ursa Major, Orion's
Sword -- which are the reference points of the sailor. The
essential rule he sets down for Icarus is that of the straight
route, halfway between the high and the low, The failure and
drowning of Icarus, a bad pilot, comes from ignoring this rule.

But the carpenter-pilot who has mastery over straightness also
knows how to weave undulating nets and draw curves. The Labyrinth
at Knossos is, in fact, described only in terms of its sinuous form
and its intertwinings. This figure, to which the artisan left his
name, is notably redundant in legend. It is immediately taken up
again in the sequence of the ball of string that Daedalus gives
Ariadne so that Theseus can retrace his steps: the solution is a
redoubling of the problem. The following episode, in certain
versions, tells how, at Delos, Daedalus teaches Theseus and the
surviving young Athenians a dance "of which the figures
imitate the turns and detours of the labyrinth, with a rhythm
marked by alternating and circular movements" (Plutarch,
Theseus 21.1). And the anecdote of the thread that follows
the spiral of a snail shell is, of course, a last redoubling of
this theme. The polymorphous thread is a perfect symbol of the
ambivalence of the artisan: Daedalus invents two antithetical
aspects of it, the thread as a rigid plumb line and the soft, round
ball of Ariadne.

Mastery and excess form the next paradox in the character of
Daedalus. At times, as a vigilant technician he knows how to follow
the middle path, respecting the equilibrium between the extreme
dryness of the sun's heat and the humidity of the sea; he knows
the precise dosage needed to temper the boiling vapor emerging from
a grotto at Selinus, so that he can build a heating system there;
but at other times he gives way to murderous transports of jealousy
and kills his nephew, or uses his competence in hydraulic
engineering to commit an assassination : by scalding Minos, he is
in effect doing something that is an inversion of what he did at
Selinus, where the vapor, once under control, was put to the
service of those taking the cure. The valuable servant of kings is
transformed into a formidable adversary. Techne always
conjoins two sides, one beneficial, the other harmful.

The last antithesis is already present in Daedalus's
genealogy: the one who has manual dexterity is characterized
essentially by his intellectual qualities. The narration of the
adventures of the artisan puts the accent on the form of mentality
that he must prove: an inventive subtlety rich in ruses and
stratagems. The most famous realization of his talent as an
architect, the labyrinth, is not presented as an edifice. An
enigmatic place, scarcely material, it is an inescapable course,
the spatial representation of the notion of aporia, a
problem that is unsolvable or that contains its solution within
itself. The daedalian labyrinth is the very image of the mind that
conceived it, tortuous, sinuous and infinite in its changes of
direction, just as the genius of its author is inexhaustible in its
resources. If the intelligence of Athena is technical, the
techne of Daedalus is conceptual. Indeed, to make the
artisan betray his own presence, Minos proposes not an ordeal of
the manual kind, but a test of intellectual ingenuity.

This may be how Greek culture resolves one of its major
contradictions. It is an artisan's culture, since most of its
creations are the work of those Homer called "craftsmen"
(demiourgoi), yet this culture assigns the artisan to a
subordinate place in society, and it depreciates the manual laborer
on the place of theoretical reflection. But by becoming a legendary
hero, the artisan is rehabilitated by his metis.